I've been running some tests applying the same Unsharp Mask Fx at various points in the signal to a clip that will be resized on render. The typical scenario would be HD to SD, but this would also be a common conversion for web video as well.
The test is simple: I export stills from the end result and look at them in Photoshop to see if I can detect any differences.
The results have been somewhat surprising.
As far as I can tell, it makes no difference in the signal path where you sharpen--the end result is always the same.
That is, sharpening a clip (or even media in the project media box!) gives you the same result as sharpening at the output bus.
In other words, Vegas always sharpens after resizing the video.
How about if you sharpen a clip, set project properties to the target resolution, and then nest that project in a new project?
Same result: vegas still applies sharpening after the downresolution, rather than before it.
The good news on this is that in nearly all situations, you do want to sharpen after resizing. Bad news is that Vegas seems to be overriding its own signal path in some of these tests, so if you do want to force a sharpen before the resolution is changed (ie, to do a capture sharpen), your only choice as far as I can tell is to physically render out to an intermediate.
One last note: for the SD crowd, sharpening may be a bad idea to begin with, as it boosts high-frequency detail which will then compete with your subject matter and motion for the limited bitrate budget of your MPEG-2 compressor.
VP 9.0e win 7/64
The test is simple: I export stills from the end result and look at them in Photoshop to see if I can detect any differences.
The results have been somewhat surprising.
As far as I can tell, it makes no difference in the signal path where you sharpen--the end result is always the same.
That is, sharpening a clip (or even media in the project media box!) gives you the same result as sharpening at the output bus.
In other words, Vegas always sharpens after resizing the video.
How about if you sharpen a clip, set project properties to the target resolution, and then nest that project in a new project?
Same result: vegas still applies sharpening after the downresolution, rather than before it.
The good news on this is that in nearly all situations, you do want to sharpen after resizing. Bad news is that Vegas seems to be overriding its own signal path in some of these tests, so if you do want to force a sharpen before the resolution is changed (ie, to do a capture sharpen), your only choice as far as I can tell is to physically render out to an intermediate.
One last note: for the SD crowd, sharpening may be a bad idea to begin with, as it boosts high-frequency detail which will then compete with your subject matter and motion for the limited bitrate budget of your MPEG-2 compressor.
VP 9.0e win 7/64